Two teachers can give identical scores to the same student and report different grades. Usually that's because one uses total points and the other uses weighted categories. Neither is wrong, but each has a way of misleading people.
How total points works
Every assignment has a point value. The grade is points earned divided by points possible. A 200-point project counts twice as much as a 100-point test, automatically.
What's good about it: students can calculate it on a napkin, and the importance of each task is visible in its point value.
Where it misleads: importance drifts with point inflation. If you assign 15 homework sets at 20 points each, that's 300 points of homework, which may be more than all your tests combined. Nobody decided homework should be 40% of the grade; it just happened.
How weighted categories work
You decide shares in advance, say tests 50%, labs 30%, homework 20%. Points within each category are averaged, then multiplied by the weight.
What's good about it: the grade reflects a decision you made on purpose. Adding more homework doesn't make homework matter more.
Where it misleads: a single item in a sparse category can swing the grade. If there are only two tests in a 50% category, each test is a quarter of the semester. It's also harder for students to check by hand, especially when empty categories are re-scaled early in the term.
A side-by-side example
A student scores 95% on 400 points of homework and 70% on 300 points of tests.
- Total points: (380 + 210) ÷ 700 = 84.3%
- Weighted (tests 60%, homework 40%): 0.6 × 70 + 0.4 × 95 = 80%
Which one is "right" depends on what you want a grade to say. If it should mainly reflect independent mastery, the weighted version is more honest here.
How to choose
- If your assignments are few and similar in size, total points is simple and fair.
- If you assign lots of practice work, weighted categories stop practice from crowding out assessments.
- If you're moving toward standards-based grading, weighting by standard or using most-recent-evidence rules fits better than either.
Whichever you use, write the rule in the syllabus with one worked example, and configure the gradebook to match. Most grade disputes are really disputes about a rule nobody wrote down.